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of travellers at frontier posts who had carelessly revealed that they pos-
sessed incriminating articles. Partly perhaps because the arrangement was
unofficial, this joint frontier control worked remarkably well with little
local friction between the FSS and the Iraqi security authorities. At HQ
level, it was based on the personal friendship and mutual goodwill between
Chokra Wood and the head of the Iraqi CID; at the local level, individual
FSS NCOs developed good personal relations with their Iraqi
counterparts.^31
Censorship was one of the most valuable sources of information for
security and intelligence organizations during the war. Therefore, close
liaison was also maintained between the censorship section of DSO Iraq
and the Iraqi Civil Censorship (ICC). The policy of this section was deter-
mined by the fact that the ICC, established in 1939, was a very small
department which did not become a fully functional organization until
after the Anglo-Iraqi armistice in June 1941, and which—unlike the
Anglo-Soviet-Persian Censorship in Tehran—had no executive authority.
Therefore, the DSO Iraq censorship section had the following five main
functions: (1) to maintain close liaison with the British Army officer
appointed as ‘assistant controller’ of the ICC; (2) to ensure that the ICC
met all the DSO’s specific requirements; (3) to advise and assist the ICC
as cases arose requiring DSO’s expertise; (4) to assist the ICC with the
preparation of watch lists, black lists, and chemical analyses of suspect cor-
respondence; and (5) to act as a high-grade clearing-house for official ICC
correspondence, some of which had to be distributed by DSO itself.
Liaison was maintained by holding weekly censorship meetings at
DSO. These joint meetings, where all aspects of censorship were discussed,
were necessary because the ICC’s weak internal security had led to a haz-
ardous situation in which it was dangerous for DSO to communicate with
them by letter. The main problem, common throughout the Middle East,
was the inefficiency of local personnel and the poor security of all govern-
ment offices. DSO were forced to recognize that no letter, once delivered
to an Iraqi department, was secure. In spite of such difficulties, censorship
played a large part in the discovery and liquidation of such hostile covert
organizations as the LIBERATORS and the DODGERS.^32 The close liai-
son between DSO and the ICC prevented the total dysfunction of the
latter organization and made it almost impossible for the enemy to attempt
large-scale espionage operations in Iraq.
Port security in the Persian Gulf was particularly important because of
the vast quantities of Lend-Lease supplies in transit between the United
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